The War

It was Charlotte who had the inside scoop on why everyone was
dissing me. I found a note inside my locker at the end of the day.

Meet me in room 301 right after school. Come by

yourself! Charlotte.

She was already inside the room when I walked in. “Sup,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. She went over to the door, looked left and right,
and then closed the door and locked it from the inside. Then she
turned to face me and started biting her nail as she talked. “Look, I
feel bad about what’s going on and I just wanted to tell you what I
know. Promise you won’t tell anyone I talked to you?”
“Promise.”
“So Julian had this huge holiday party over winter break,” she said.
“I mean, huge. My sister’s friend had had her sweet sixteen at the
same place last year. There were like two hundred people there, so I
mean it’s a huge place.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Yeah, and ... well, pretty much everybody in the whole grade was
there.”
“Not everybody,” I joked.
“Right, not everybody. Duh. But like even parents were there, you
know. Like my parents were there. You know Julian’s mom is the vice
president of the school board, right? So she knows a lot of people.
Anyway, so basically what happened at the party was that Julian
went around telling everyone that you punched him because you had
emotional problems....”
“What?!”